8 district school units flagged in bid to find cheating
Eight school districts and one charter school in southwestern Pennsylvania were flagged multiple times in a 2009 "data forensics" analysis of standardized test scores that could indicate cheating.
But representatives of several of those districts said they were unaware of any untoward conduct on the part of students, teachers or administrators, and were quick to note that the report did not conclude that cheating took place.
"You can say there may have been cheating, but that does not conclude there was cheating. I do not believe our students cheated. I do not believe our teachers allowed them to cheat," Monessen City School District superintendent Cynthia Chelen said Tuesday.
The report noted irregularities among test scores from grade four at Monessen Elementary Center.
Data Recognition Corp., which develops the exams taken by students in the state's 3,000-odd schools, analyzed the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment for the 2008-09 school year for grades three through eight and 11.
As part of a contract with the state Department of Education under the administration of former Gov. Ed Rendell, Data Recognition Corp. analyzed a variety of measures, including erasure marks on test sheets.
Several dozen schools were flagged multiple times across the state, and the results were broken down by grade level.
In addition to Monessen, the districts listed in this part of the state as having irregularities in various grades were:
• New Kensington-Arnold Area School District (Fort Crawford School)
• Connellsville Area School District (Bullskin Township Elementary School, Clifford N. Pritts Elementary School, South Side Elementary School, Connellsville Area Career and Technical School)
• Uniontown Area School District (Benjamin Franklin Elementary-Middle School)
• Gateway School District (Moss Side Middle School)
• Big Beaver Falls Area School District (Beaver Falls Middle School)
• Pittsburgh Public Schools (Sterrett Classical Academy)
• Belle Vernon Area School District (Bellmar Middle School)
• Ambridge Area School District (Ambridge Senior High School)
Also listed was Midland-based Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School.
"We contacted [the education department] today and learned that results flagged for PA Cyber appear primarily to have been caused by larger than expected numbers of students taking the PSSA in certain subgroups as a result of enrollment growth in the school," the school said in a statement.
"Also, a very small number of individual students performed better than they were predicted to statistically. There were NO results flagged for PA Cyber for irregular patterns of erasures."
Ebony Pugh, spokeswoman for Pittsburgh Public Schools, said the flags for Sterrett resulted from a 27 percent jump in the number of economically disadvantaged students and had nothing to do with erasure marks.
Tammy Stern, interim superintendent in Connellsville, which was flagged the most of any district in the region, was taken unawares by the report.
"I didn't know of any possible cheating. I wasn't even in central office during that school year. I was head principal at the high school at the time," Ms. Stern said. She added that there had been much turnover at the school. "I don't even know what kind of investigation could be done at this point."
Although the report is dated July 2009, it came to light only last week through an article in Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an online publication.
Andy Porter, dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, reviewed the report for the Notebook.
In an interview with the Post-Gazette, Mr. Porter praised the state for contracting the report, deemed the data analysis "reasonable" and said even one alert indicating a possible irregularity in test-taking should prompt a review.
"If there's one flag, that's something to be investigated because to get a flag, you have to have a result that is just completely beyond anything expected to happen by chance," Mr. Porter said.
Mr. Porter also asserted that any true cheating problems that were uncovered probably had to do less with students than with teachers or administrators concerned with merit pay and avoiding sanctions.
"I don't think we're talking about student cheating here at all. We're talking about adult cheating," Mr. Porter said.
School districts are obliged under the federal No Child Left Behind Act to boost test scores and make certain annual progress or risk being sanctioned in various ways.
Former Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak, who stepped down last year, said he hadn't seen the report. However, he said he did not find it unusual that its contents were not made public, and he said in an interview Tuesday that he doubted it was the first time such an analysis was carried out.
Typically, Mr. Zahorchak said, allegations of cheating on the part of educators are confidential and end up at the state's Professional Standards and Practices Commission. If an investigation finds evidence of cheating and discipline is meted out, the results are published in an annual report.
While the current education administration in Harrisburg is sorting out what to do about the 2009 report, it appears there might be unintended consequences.
Ms. Chelen, the Monessen superintendent, said the report would prompt her to address her teachers and advise them to curtail students from changing answers on tests to prevent any future allegation of impropriety.
After spending 20 years in the classroom, Ms. Chelen said that could have a chilling effect on students who legitimately want to change their answers after taking time to think through the question.
"Now the students are going to feel they can't go back and change their answers," Ms. Chelen said. "I've watched kids take tests for years. They do make changes, and teachers encourage that -- [to] go back and check your answer. That's going to be difficult to tell them not to do that anymore."
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